Marathon Training: Week Two
How Did People Run before Portable Music Players?
Seriously. It sometimes feels like music is the only thing that gets me through my runs, especially the harder ones. It helps me to zone out and certain songs just seem to breathe life into my legs and lungs the second they start playing.
I have a very limited supply of music on my phone and longer runs tend to loop through my whole collection at least once. As a result, at some point during my weekly long runs, slow runs, and longer tempo runs, Dear Sergio is guaranteed to come on and hit me with the line Run, run, run, all you do is fucking run. It’s starting to become a valid criticism.
I’ve also discovered that Life Size Mirror, one of my favourite songs of all time, and one of the two songs that really got me into punk music back in the day, more or less perfectly matches up to my natural running cadence. Whenever that song comes on I find myself instantly locked in to the beat and it just makes running feel so much more natural when that happens.
Tempo Run (Monday) — 8.5km at 12.5km/h:
Oh boy was this one hard. I felt pretty bad during the 5km tempo runs from week one (runs because I had to do it twice), but this was a whole different level of pain. Despite being a pace I know from experience that I can run at over this distance it just felt punishingly hard from start to finish.
This was by far the closest I’ve come to giving up so far (admittedly “so far” isn’t very far yet) but I pushed through and managed to drag myself to the end. The last two and a half kilometres in particular had me seriously wanting to give up and try again the next day.
Overall, tempo runs are maintaining the impression they gave me during week one of being by far the hardest part of the week. Here’s hoping I can adapt, because they’re only going to get longer, and not slower, from here on out.
Speed Work (Wednesday) — 4 x 1200m at 14.4km/h:
My second speed work session of the program and the second one that’s felt pretty easy. When I say that, I don’t mean comfortable, it’s still a vigorous workout that gets my heart rate right up and the sweat flowing freely, but I’m yet to feel like I’m struggling, or to feel particularly drained at the end.
If this keeps up, I may have to look at upping the pace a little bit for my Wednesday speed sessions to try and make them a little more challenging, because at the moment I don’t feel like I’m really pushing myself with these at all.
Long Slow Run* (Thursday) — 8km at 8.7km/h:
I put the asterisk there because it wasn’t exactly long. I tried running the (roughly) 14km home from work and for whatever reason I just wasn’t feeling it at all that day. I was going slow the whole way but with each step it felt like an uphill struggle and as it wasn’t a core run I bailed out just over halfway through and hopped on a Hello Bike for the last few kilometres. (Hello Bike are one of China’s many rent-a-bike companies.)
Long Run (Saturday) — 20km at 11.4km/h:
On my previous weekly long run I struggled with my pacing and ran the whole thing too fast. I wouldn’t say I found it tough going as such, but I did feel pretty drained by the end, with fairly laboured breathing.
This time out, I felt much better; my pacing was spot on and I finished feeling good, with fuel left in the tank. I’ll drop my splits below. Compared to last time they were far more consistent.
There were two splits that were significantly above target pace: one of those came at the turnaround where I overcompensated on the one minor climb (a long ramp heading up to the overpass where the Greenway crosses over a major road junction in between two parks) and then benefited hugely from the following descent; and one at the end where I opened the taps a little just for fun.
Easy 10km (Sunday) — 10km at 10.8km/h:
I made a slight departure from my long slow Sunday plan this week to fit in an easy 10km in the Velociti 2s. I did this because I’m trying to work on my foot strike and cadence and I wanted before, during, and after data that I can look back on at the end that will let me see if any significant changes have occurred.
This was my belated “before” run, and so I simply set off at a comfortable pace and tried to maintain it, without focusing on my cadence or foot strike, to try and get data that was as natural as possible. I’m going to do this again eight weeks in and then 14 weeks in, so that I have data to compare, and hopefully I’ll see a gradual improvement in both focus areas.
Long Slow Run* (Sunday) — 9km at 10.8km/h:
This run was a mistake.
After my 10km in the morning I pretty much spent the whole day inside lying on the couch and I felt so slobbish by the time evening rolled around that I just wanted to head outside and get a little activity in before bed.
I was planning on doing a slow, easy 10km as a recovery run but started out too fast and ended up running too far forward on the balls of my feet, leaving my calves burning by the turnaround. It wasn’t a conscious decision to do either, but I should really have stopped after two or three kilometres and just walked back home.
The result was aching calves and tired legs, which I’m certain contributed to just how awful I felt during the next day’s tempo run (more on that next week). This run turned out to be the very definition of “junk miles”, causing far more harm than good.
